Five minutes into NBC's new sitcom Kath & Kim, I wrote "this is like a bad Kids in the Hall sketch." After 10 minutes, I wrote "this is what Arrested Development would have been like without Michael Bluth and his son to ground the rest of the characters."

By the end of the episode, I had another thought, one I didn't write down: Kath & Kim is what would happen if you took all the malignant energy from the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton paparazzi coverage, My Super Sweet16 and the worst of reality TV and somehow turned it into a sitcom.

The thing is, it's not as terrible as some critics have said. It's amusing the way the title characters -- a mother and daughter played by Molly Shannon and Selma Blair -- can zoom from serious to gossipy in a nanosecond. It's not the cast's fault -- Blair and Shannon, only eight years apart in age, are fairly belivable as the vapid, materialistic, celebrity-obsessed and spoiled duo.

The problem is, that, well, they're vapid, materialistic, celebrity-obsessed duo. And they're being told, apparently, to turn all their emotions up to 11. Another thought I had while watching: Do people actually act this way? Here's another: will anyone find this funny? And why is NBC putting this on the same night as 30 Rock, The Office and My Name Is Earl?